I spent three years washing blood from his designer suits, only to hear him boast that losing me wouldn't even inconvenience his weekend.

A soft, measured step sounded from the bedroom threshold.

Nico didn't turn around. He stood frozen before the open safe, his head bowed, the dead phone still clutched in his white-knuckled fist.

Arthur appeared silently in the dressing room doorway.

The older underboss was still wearing his dark suit, his trench coat slung over his arm, his scarred, weathered face illuminated by the vanity track lights. He took in the empty shelves, the open safe, the glittering pile of abandoned platinum, and the shattered posture of the man who ruled New York’s docks.

Arthur did not look surprised. His lined face was heavy with an ancient, sorrowful gravity.

He looked at Nico, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly whisper that cut through the silence of the penthouse:

“How much did she hear?”

Nico slowly, agonizingly lifted his head.

His dark wavy hair fell across his brow, his face pale as marble beneath his dark stubble. He looked from Arthur’s grim face to the small, illuminated screen of his security handset resting on the vanity counter.

The screen was open to the private security surveillance grid for the building's service core.

On the display, frozen in high-resolution monochrome, was the timestamped footage from the service elevator at 8:14 PM.

The camera showed Norah standing in the center of the steel carriage. She was wearing her old, oversized gray hoodie, her faded jeans, and her worn leather boots. Slung over her shoulder was a single, battered canvas duffel bag. Her posture was straight, her chin lifted, her hands tucked into the fleece pouch of her sweater.

She wasn't crying. She looked completely, terrifyingly calm.

Nico stared at the numbers in the bottom corner of the screen:

TIMESTAMP: 20:14:22 EST.

His mind raced backward through the evening, tracing the timeline with horrifying, mathematical precision.

Eight-fourteen.

At eight-fourteen, he had been standing in the study with Arthur, pouring a second glass of single-barrel scotch, laughing as he leaned against the mahogany desk.

At eight-fourteen, he had looked Arthur in the eye and said the words:

“If she left me today, I wouldn’t care. I’d change the locks by morning. Forget her name by Friday.”

She had been standing on the other side of the mahogany door.

She had been holding the silver tray with his water and his fruit.

She had heard every single syllable, weighted every single cruel inflection, and decided in that exact second that three years of devotion were over.

Nico’s hand trembled so violently that the security phone slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the glass top of the vanity.

He slowly looked back toward the empty half of the walk-in closet—toward the bare wooden shelf where her worn boots had sat, toward the empty hangers where her simple sweaters used to hang between his bespoke suits.

The master of the Blackwood empire felt his knees buckle, his breath tearing from his chest in a broken, strangled rasp.